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The mRNA research was already very well underway before the pandemic. In fact the COVID vaccines were low hanging fruit.
by tonmoy 5y ago
The mRNA research was already very well underway before the pandemic. In fact the COVID vaccines were low hanging fruit.
- xiphias2 5y agoWhy are you so sure about that? From what I saw in last year’s Moderna presentation on R&D day they ramped up vaccines for other infections _because_ it worked so well for COVID, but they were focusing more on therapeutics before, as they thought there’s more money in it and less in preventing infections with vaccines.
- malermeister 5y agoI would imagine there's a lot more capital going around in that industry now though :)
- mikepurvis 5y agoCapital and also just straight up mindshare. How many people would have had any idea what mRNA was two years ago? Now it's a kitchen table thing, everyone's seen a dozen explainers on what the basic idea is and how it works. It's firmly associated with new technology, agility, and highly effective vaccination.
- jacquesm 5y agoUnfortunately, it is also at times oversold and this will do a lot of damage. Vaccines are regularly hyped as miracle medication which in turn causes people to stop following lots of other common sense rules, rather than as one arrow in a whole quiver of tools.
- mikepurvis 5y agoOh definitely, and there's for sure also the likelihood of the name being hijacked for other technologies that are only peripherally related. See also the zillions of cheapo air purifiers prominently branded to contain "HEPA type" filtration.
- newsclues 5y agoHow long before they would have been commercialized without an epidemic? Now, is there people greedy enough to start a pandemic or allow it to occur, to accelerate the pay off of this new technology? (I guess there is financial and medical technology incentives to accelerate mRNA technology)
- zeven7 5y agoNow that's a movie I'd watch
- junon 5y ago> Now, is there people greedy enough to start a pandemic or allow it to occur, to accelerate the pay off of this new technology? Nobody that would directly profit off of it, no. This is conspiracy talk.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoThe pandemic gave it the final push in the same way WW2 gave nuclear weapons the last push and the cold war gave rocketry the final push. In all these cases it was pretty well understood that it can work but there were a ton of engineering obstacles to overcome.
- acdha 5y agoThey had clinical trials starting in 2013 (rabies), 2016 (Zika), and others. The big thing COVID-19 did was rapidly accelerate large-scale testing — normally you have to wait for people to get sick so you can show that the vaccinated population was safer – and get massive investments in scaling up manufacturing capacity. That last part will be the most enduring benefit since engineers rarely get worse at making things and a new vaccine would be starting with a known platform and well-established costs — I’m sure that someone at Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, etc. can now give you very accurate estimates for how much money and time it’ll take to make a given number of doses.